Pro Tone Pedals Spitfire

3 knobs. Level, Drive, Tone.

It requires a bit of dialing in for your particular application, like any pedal.

True Bypass. (I won't buy buffered bypass pedals anymore because of the way they interact with the guitar and the other pedals.)

On to the pedal itself. In essence this is an overdrive ala the TS series. It colors the sound differently though. It's a little more transparent than a TS. It adds grind without taking over the tone. Bass gets a little tighter but without that transistor edge of the TS series. Not an extreme pedal at all.

There are a few ways to use it. As a bump to a cranked-up amp it will add crunch. As a solo boost it will add compression and sustain. In either case it will not sound identical to your straight guitar tone, but it sounds pretty good, and it doesn't overly flatten the dynamics or obscure the guitar's personality or your playing. It cleans up reasonably well when you roll the volume knob back but stays colored. In my opinion it's better used as something you turn on when you need it as opposed to something you leave on all the time. The coloration would get to me after a while if I left it on constantly.

The Tone knob is more like a treble filter knob (like the rat pedal). It doesn't add fizz the way an eq would. But, you can't really do tone-shaping with it (but if you're into that, get a graphic eq).

Seems like a very solid box. Nice soldiering job inside. Quality parts. I ding gear makers if they use plastic jack sockets (ever have one break on the road?) or board-mounted switches and knobs and other cost-cutting compromises, but no such nonsense here. Looks like it'd be easy to fix down the road when the switch gives out or whatever. Nothing is forever, but I can easily see this thing being like the old mxr boxes with scraped-up paint you still see on stages every night, 30 years on.

This is a "Texas Tone" pedal, plain and simple. It gets the job done w/o clouding the tone or interacting with my other pedals. The germanium fuzz (very touchy) in front of it in the chain doesn't freak out when I turn it on. I have no worries about it's build quality.

Like any pedal, go out and try it first. Web clips are useless. It's a fairly subtle effect as overdrives go so if you're looking for extreme, forget it. I like it better than the maxon 808 reissue I tried. It's a more natural sound. It ate my Digitech Bad Monkey pedal for breakfast and I'll be selling that one soon.

I also don't mind that my money is going to a small hand builder and not to a company who builds stuff in China.

Well priced for the quality you get. It's a winner.

typical 3 knob setup. Volume, gain and Tone.

I use this to slam the front end on a Old JCM800. This pedal will get you to metal territory if you use it with a already distorted amp and push it harder. It can get a little bright, so be easy with the Tone knob. This replaced a MXR ZW-44 and I havent looked back since.

When I received it, the tone knob didnt do anything. I sent it back to Dennis at ProTone and he had it back to me in record time. I belive it to be dependable and have had no problem since then.

Dennis has been Fantastic in every aspect. Since the Spitfire, I have also purchased the Lithium Chorus and had absolutly no issues whatsoever. My repair was in record time. Dennis is a Class Act all the way.

Fantastic Overdrive that dosent follow the "ts808 clone" route.... Give em a Try, you wont be sorry

Three knobs in the standard TS type format. Does take some tweaking to get a great tone. It can get pretty bright, so use some caution.
Some docs with example settings would be nice. I shot them an Email- more on that to come.

Like I said- you can dial in a really bright tone, which may make you think you got a P.O.S. pedal. Just play with it, there are some great tones in there. I?m not sold on the Spitfires versatility. If you're looking to replace your TS8 or the like- this is not the pedal for you. If you want to do some heavy riffing, this might be what you're looking for.
My favorite setting is with the drive at 3:00 and tone at 1:00, this will give a really smooth and fat sustain for leads.

So far no problems- sure, I would gig with no back up.

Like I said I was a little dissapointed about not getting a manual with some example settings, so I shot an Email to Dennis (Pro Tone is a one man show I guess) and in just a couple hours he had some really tasty setting suggestions for me.

Great tone, great price, AMAZINGLY cool looks... I couldnt be happier with the Spitfire.